A slab of concrete fell from the 52nd Street subway station Monday and almost killed a man who was climbing the stairs to get on the platform, according to a stunned straphanger who witnessed the near-miss.

The Citizens Budget Commission back in 2015 noted that it was the worst station in the system—with 79 percent of its structural components—defined as stairs, platform edges, ventilators and more– not in a state of good repair.

When the Sunnyside Post broke the story last month that the station was slated to be repaired along with five others, Council Member Jimmy Van Bramer was particularly critical of how the MTA let the 52nd Street station fall into disrepair.

Another third-term governor, another Medicaid-linked budget gap.

New York State is set to begin the upcoming fiscal year with an estimated $6 billion budget deficit, according to Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo.

Much of the problem has been attributed to Medicaid. Costs and enrollment have risen but that’s not the only factor. Cuomo, during his 2018 campaign for a third term, increased Medicaid reimbursement rates for hospitals and nursing homes.

The $6.1 billion deficitin the new fiscal year is a projection based on the state continuing current spending trends and promises made in the 2019-20 budget. Those include increases in debt payments and state employees' salaries and benefits, and a $1 billion hike in education spending.

The actual number could be lower and there is precedent for it changing. In 2011, Cuomo said the state was facing a $10 billion deficit based on spending trends. He later recalculated that to make it $1 billion, based on actual year-to-year spending.

If the state increased spending by about the 2 percent inflation rate, rather than maintaining the projected spending levels, the deficit wouldn't be $6 billion but closer to $2 billion, the Citizens Budget Commission says.

New Yorkers got another alarming wake-up call last week about the state’s unsustainable pension funds. They’d be wise to pay close attention.

State and local employees who pad their pension payments by chalking up overtime as they near retirement could cost taxpayers a whopping $32 billion to $54 billion over the next 20 years, a new report — released Monday by the Center for Cost Effective Government — found. With inflation, that figure might jump to $84 billion.

It’s a lot of money, even by New York standards.

Then there are the benefits promised to workers years down the road: Taxpayers will be on the hook as the workforce continues to age, retire — and live longer.

Meanwhile, even as the state faces a $6.1 billion budget hole, Albany continues to pass benefit sweeteners for public-sector unions that contribute to their campaigns — 18 of them this session alone, the Citizens Budget Commission notes.

Tolls on motorists entering midtown Manhattan promise to alter everyday life for millions of people in the most populous U.S. city. Yet with the fees slated to begin in a year, the panel empowered to set pricing and other policies has yet to be created.

Transit advocates and planners say they are increasingly worried that the “Traffic Mobility Review Board” won’t have enough time to get the system going. Its recommendations are due no earlier than Nov. 15, 2020, and the congestion pricing could go into effect as early as Jan. 1, 2021. Any delay would stall funding for improvements to the city’s problem-plagued subways and buses.

“With one year to go until congestion pricing begins, the governor and the MTA need to form the Traffic Mobility Review Board as soon as possible,” said Kate Slevin, a senior vice president of the Regional Plan Association, which for a century has helped set an infrastructure agenda. “The MTA needs to build in enough time to let the public know how they will be affected by congestion pricing and share the details with as much time as possible.”

Slevin’s association was one of 19 advocacy, policy and good government groups that sent a Nov. 15 letter to the MTA -- including the business-funded Citizens Budget Commission, the American Institute of Architects, Common Cause New York and the League of Women Voters -- calling on the MTA to immediately appoint the board and obey the requirements of the state’s Open Meetings law to ensure its deliberations are disclosed to the public.

Will Gov. Andrew Cuomo finally let New York City save money on public construction projects — in the same way he says the state has?

New Yorkers will find out over the next few days, as Cuomo faces a Monday deadline to sign, or veto, a bill letting the city use a “design-build” model for contracting big construction jobs.

The Citizens Budget Commission figures the city could be spared as much as $2 billion over 10 years if design-build were used for bridge projects alone.

As we usually do around this time of year, Gotham Gazette asked New York politicos to look into their crystal balls for predictions for the year ahead. Below you'll find insights from elected officials, advocates, analysts, and others who are tuned in to New York politics.

We know that 2020 will be interesting given that lawmakers in Albany must close a massive budget gap while the entire Legislature is on the ballot, Mayor de Blasio will be in his next-to-last year and trying to burnish his legacy, there's a Queens Borough President special election, congestion pricing is coming, NYCHA must be saved, the presidential election will loom over everything, and more. But what *exactly* will happen? Read below for some ideas.

Carol Kellermann, formerly Citizens Budget Commission

The Appellate Division will deny the City’s appeal in the challenge to the City’s real property tax law, TENNY vs NYC et al, and the administration and the Council will be forced to choose between a trial about how tax discriminatory the is and finally coming up with a more equitable property tax system.


Andrew Rein, Citizens Budget Commission
-The legislature and Governor will amend state law to allow New York City to have a true Rainy Day Fund to be used when there is a recession or severe emergency. Then, city leaders will coalesce around a prudent set of city law changes requiring reasonable deposits to the fund and use only when truly needed.

-Governor Cuomo will resist imprudent calls for more fiscal gimmickry and counterproductive taxes during the currently expanding economy and lead the state to balance the budget with restrained spending in Medicaid and school aid to wealthy districts, and other targeted cuts.

Fresh off a battle over new natural gas hookups downstate and amid questions about reaching the state’s greenhouse gas reduction goals, a group of more than two dozen environmental organizations is seeking a mandate that new buildings run solely on electricity.

That means they would be heated with electricity rather than fossil fuels or natural gas. While traditional electric heat is expensive, the idea here would be to spur the development of new renewable energy sources such as wind, solar or hydro as opposed to gas or oil.

Analysts have said that’s an ambitious goal and won’t be reached short of some fundamental changes.

Nor is everyone convinced that natural gas should be halted. The Citizens Budget Commission, for instance, earlier in December issued a study calling for a number of approaches to reach greenhouse gas reductions but they believe limiting pipelines would amount to a self-imposed constraint. In addition to power generation and home heating, natural gas also powers gas stoves. A moratorium would make people switch to another energy source for cooking.

The state’s $6.1 billion projected deficit for this fiscal year may be getting personal for 2 million New Yorkers because the annual tax rebate checks they are receiving this fall are “on the table” for items that could be axed, state officials said

This fall and winter, qualified homeowners will receive property tax relief checks that average $357 to $490 statewide, including an average of $674.94 in Nassau County and $596.32 in Suffolk County, according to the state tax department. Those checks are arriving in mailboxes now and will continue for several weeks.

Earlier this month, Moody’s Investors Service issued a “credit negative” caution over the deficit.

“The state has a spending problem,” said David Friedfel of the independent Citizens Budget Commission. “The state simply did not keep spending in line with budgeted amounts and is now facing the music. The budget should be balanced through spending control.”

“Santa Cuomo” doled out his yearly regional economic-development goodies last week, even as fresh studies debunked the governor’s pretense that all this “investment” is anything more than pork.

Headlining Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s gift list, as The Post’s Carl Campanile reported, was $3.5 million to help build the world’s first rap museum in the South Bronx.

The Universal Hip Hop Museum is already open in temporary quarters, aiming to move into its final $80 million, 50,000-square-foot home in 2023. It received $6.5 million in city funds and has financial help from Microsoft and MIT as well as from hip-hop artists such as Nas and LL Cool J. Did it really need a boost from a state government facing nearly $30 billion in budget holes over the next few years — $6 billion next year alone?

Indeed, that question applies to all $760 million in “economic development” grants Cuomo announced, much of them for dubious projects like yet another downtown Albany parking garage.

Meanwhile, the Citizens Budget Commission dropped a report slamming Cuomo’s entire Regional Economic Development Councils scheme — noting that it suffers from a clear lack of any meaningful strategy for actually promoting growth, exacerbated by weak to nonexistent reporting on how projects actually proceed (let alone succeed).

Long Island won $87.9 million in state aid Thursday for infrastructure projects, company expansions and worker training, capturing one of the largest awards among New York’s 10 regions.

The Island came up a big winner in Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s annual competition for capital grants and state tax credits aimed at creating jobs. He appointed 10 Regional Economic Development Councils in 2011 to vie with one another for the aid.

The 2019 allocation for Nassau and Suffolk counties will be divided among 94 projects, including $5 million each for sewer pipes in Great Neck and Long Beach, $3.6 million for land purchases in Suffolk County to protect drinking water, and $3 million for a new YMCA in Lake Success with daycare services for the children of Northwell Health employees.

Still, the Citizens Budget Commission, a nonpartisan fiscal watchdog in Manhattan, said there is room for improvement.

Funding awarded via the councils is “thinly spread among a region and industries,” the commission said in a statement. “Regional assessments should carry more weight in funding allocations” than the opinions of Albany bureaucrats.

There is a reason why Access-A-Ride is better known as “Stress-A-Ride” for the approximately 170,000 New Yorkers who depend on it.

The bill for Access-A-Ride will hit $616 million this year and the MTA is seeking additional funding from the City of New York. It’s mind-boggling to think this service can cost the cash-strapped agency so much for such low-quality service. That’s why before anyone kicks in additional funding, the MTA must fundamentally transform the way it runs its paratransit program and bring it into the 21st century.

In the last five years, reports by experts at the Citizens Budget Commission, NYU Rudin Transportation Center, and Comptroller Scott Stringer’s office all point to the burdensome administrative and coordination layers that are the direct result of multiple types of contracts and vendors at every step of the service: verification, booking, dispatching, routing, vehicle operations, customer service, etc.

Transit watchdog groups continue to push New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority to amend its under-the-radar emergency contractor debarment rule.

While the rule drew little mention at Wednesday's busy and disruptive board meeting, opponents argue that its harshness could hinder contractor bidding and compromise projects under the authority's proposed $51.5 billion, five-year capital program, which a state panel is reviewing.

Also opposing the debarment rule are Reinvent Albany, Tri-State Transportation Campaign, Citizens Budget Commission, Riders Alliance and TransitCenter. In a letter to board members, they cited revelations at a New York City Transit committee meeting in November that three vendors did not submit proposals on a $38.8 million design-build contract for station accessibility upgrades, citing "excessive risk" because of contract terms that included debarment.